


above

by Withpetals_withblood



Series: despite the odds [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blasphemy, Consensual Sex, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Shameless Smut, a bit of angst, post trk, religion is talked about, some fluff-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 15:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9553922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Withpetals_withblood/pseuds/Withpetals_withblood
Summary: Adam Parrish lives above the church Ronan Lynch regularly visits. It's summer and their friends are somewhere on the west coast. They've kissed and touched and wanted, but they can't seem to find words for what they are.Ronan goes to pray. Adam listens.





	

St. Agnes was a skeleton at night.

Its air of warmth was dampened by candles waning into their own wax, riddled with empty pews and dimly lit lamps. Shadows flutter across oddly angled walls. The staircase creaked and bent under footsteps. On the left, a row of three confessional booths sat empty, waiting for Ronan to crawl inside them and whisper about his demons. 

Forgive me Father for I have sinned, he'd say. I brought blood back from my dreams. An elk with oil-black horns. His touch still lingers on my skin. Ronan would say all of these things as well as: Five days ago he fucked me for the first time. Ronan would choke on his words and swallow them back down. Confession wasn't for people like him, who lost count of his tragedies years ago, who had princes like Gansey for friends, and witches he could call for help, and a psychic's daughter who could amplify the power of others.

Not his powers though. 

He leaned back in the pew and watched the last of the candles flicker out on the candelabra. Footsteps again, heavier than the nuns. Familiar in a way he couldn't place. How does someones footsteps become a familiarity? How does someones movements, the sound of their hand brushing their front pocket, the flit of a sigh over their lips, become attuned to him? 

"Are you forgiven?" Adam asked. He stood at the end of the aisle, bare-footed, wearing a grease stained shirt and blue jeans. 

"You tell me," Ronan said. "I would guess not, but who knows at this point."

Another candle died out.

Ronan pulled at the zipper on his leather jacket and leaned his head back. When he turned, he caught sight of Adam's mouth ajar, his thumbs poised on the outside of his front pockets. A week ago they were at the Barns. A week ago Ronan had Adam on the stairs, and Adam had Ronan against the wall, and then in a bed. A week ago, Ronan realized this wasn't something easy or tame or pure. He felt the magic. He felt the wickedness unfurling inside of them and between them and around them. Greywaren and Magician. Forces not meant to collide, colliding again and again and again. 

Ronan felt Cabeswater stir inside him. But he didn't tell Adam that. Not yet.

"Do you think he listens?" Adam leaned his hip against the pew.

Ronan nodded. "Do you?"

"I listen," Adam whispered, bypassing the question itself.

Ronan's lips pulled back into a fanged grin. "They'd burn you at the stake for that." His eyes narrowed, one brow lifting high on his forehead. "Magician," he hissed under his breath.

" _Me?_ " Adam snorted. "And what would they do with you?"

Ronan stood up and walked down the aisle. His shoulder brushed Adam's as he took for the stairs. "He was most beautiful of them all," Ronan said.

Adam followed, trailing behind him. "Who?"

"The devil." 

"You're the devil?"

"What else could I be?" Ronan mumbled, half teasing, half entirely serious. Adam shut the door behind him and palmed the wall for the light. "It's fitting."

Adam's hand slid over the switch, but it still didn't turn on. "Electricity's out for the night." He fumbled around in the dark. Ronan watched the long lines of his shadow move about, knocking things off his makeshift nightstand, pulling open a moth-eaten curtain to let moonlight come in through the circular window on the far end of the room. He found a packet of matches and lit a candle. "It happens sometimes."

"Romantic," Ronan mused.

Adam smirked. "Is it?"

There was something endearing about the way Adam said it, a rawness to it, a real curiosity. He smiled at Ronan then, the candle making his features look graceful and delicate, the darkness making him look monstrous and true. 

A week ago Ronan was underneath Adam.  
A week ago Ronan had the taste of them branded on his tongue.

"Ronan," Adam said, his tone edging on worried. "What is it?"

I heard Cabeswater.

"Can I fuck you?" Ronan imagined that if Adam could ask so simply, he could.

"You sure you wanna fuck me in a church, Lynch." Adam took a step, another, until he was in Ronan's space, palms gliding under his shirt. "I've heard that's a sin."

One side of Ronan's mouth lifted. He finagled Adam's hands from under his shirt, losing his jacket in the process, and closed his fingers around Adam's wrists. "I'll pray about it," he rasped, and backed Adam up against the wall. "Turn around." 

Adam chewed on his bottom lip. He did as he was told and faced the wall. Ronan pressed his hands flat against it, kicked his feet apart, and mouthed at the nape of his neck. 

"If we're not friends, what are we?" Ronan asked. His teeth sank into the soft place where Adam's throat met his shoulder. 

"Together," Adam said through a sigh. "I've been tellin' the nuns you're my boyfriend."

Ronan's stomach fluttered and jumped. He smiled against Adam's shoulder, a wave of profound relief washing from his head to his toes. He kissed Adam's neck again, the place behind his ear, under the hem of his shirt, just below his jaw. 

One of Adam's hands snuck away from Ronan's hold and folded over his head, touching Ronan's skull, tracing his ear and cheek. "I think I felt it," he whispered. He sounded startled. His voice shook. "I think I felt that damn forest, Ronan."

Ronan dragged his bottom lip down the column of Adam's throat. "I felt it," he confessed. "I heard it."

Adam whipped around to face him. His eyes were wild. His mouth hung open as he inhaled one unsteady breath after the next. "It died. It's not possible."

"If I can dream, it can live," Ronan snapped. 

Adam blinked, processing. 

"You know I can still dream. I heard it last week, it was faint, but it was there."

Adam grabbed Ronan's hand and lifted it to his cheek. He placed it there, thumb dancing over Adam's mouth, palm cupping the side of his face. Adam's tongue darted out to taste the pad of Ronan's finger.

"Sure it's me you want, Parrish? Or is it the forest?" Ronan purred, a playful, confident smile perched on his mouth.

"Are you gonna fuck me or not?" Adam bit, mirroring a smile back at him.

Ronan knew they should talk about this. He knew they had to talk about it. Somewhere, sometime, Cabeswater was going to call to them, and they would have to answer. The impossible knowing of Greywaren and Magician becoming themselves again sent live wires sparking in Ronan's fingertips. His stomach leapt and his head spun and Adam was in front of him, looking at him, waiting for him. Every impossible thing seemed possible - because if Adam could look at him like that, anything could happen. Ronan was sure of it.

"No," Ronan said softly. Adam looked confused at first until Ronan kissed him. "I'm not gonna fuck you, Adam," he mumbled against his lips.

They'd fucked already. They would fuck again. But tonight Ronan wanted to unwrap the layers of Adam Parrish one by one. He wanted to leave him shaking and powerful, with magic lingering under his fingernails and in his bed. He wanted to listen for Cabeswater. He wanted to hear Adam come apart and come together, the essence of commits collided and atoms splitting. Ronan just wanted. He wanted so much he physically felt it in his chest, a prang of need that coursed down his body, a hunger that he couldn't find anywhere except here.

Adam's eyes cracked open, excitement buzzing on his skin like fireflies. He slowed down, unwinding for Ronan like Ronan had wanted. His arms crept over Ronan's shoulders. His lips parted for wet, slow, dizzying kissing. He let Ronan back up onto the bed, let Ronan push him down and pull his shirt over his head. It was all so much more careful. It was all explicitly real. Ronan remembered last week when he'd been sure it was a dream, when he'd done anything and everything that Adam would allow, and let Adam do anything and everything to him. It felt so distant, but it was only five days ago, and now Adam was looking up at him, bare chested and flushed. 

"In the box," Adam said. He nodded toward the makeshift nightstand while he went to work getting out of his jeans. 

"You need actual furniture," Ronan said.

Adam was busy with the button on Ronan's jeans. "The box does its job, Lynch."

"We should get food sometime." Ronan found the small tube on top of a stack of old textbooks. "Go out, see a movie, do something normal for once."

"Or we can try to cast a spell," Adam remedied. "Turn a tree into a fox, make water run backward up a river, conjure lightening. That sounds like an acceptable date to me."

Ronan dropped his forehead against Adam's shoulder, a laugh breaking past his lips. "Or that," he said, and shuffled out of his jeans. "You think we can really...?"

"I think you can do anything," Adam mumbled. He pulled Ronan's chin with two fingers, forcing his gaze. His mouth opened and closed, as if he had more to say and changed his mind.

Ronan wanted to know what that unspoken was. But Adam was lifting his hips and pawing his boxers away, nudging Ronan with his wrist for assistance. Ronan tugged. Adam kicked. Then it was lips on lips again, the same rough, needy kissing from last week. The kissing that led to the stairs and the wall and the bed. Ronan opened his mouth for the stroke of Adam's tongue, the heat of his breath. Ronan slowed it down, sucking gently on Adam's tongue, scraping his teeth along Adam's bottom lip, kissing him smooth and long.

"Oh," Adam whispered. He accepted another lingering, heated kiss. His cheeks toasted and his eyes softened, languid and pliant under Ronan's hands. "You could've said so," he mused, and tilted his head back against the pillow when Ronan set his lips against his neck. 

"Said what?" Ronan kissed a faded yellow bruise from the last time they'd been together, and crept lower, down his chest, took one nipple between his teeth. 

Adam pushed into him. His mouth was open and quivering. "That you wanted to do this, and not..."

Neither one of them had the fortitude or courage to say the words make love. Especially not Ronan. Especially not Adam. Absolutely not. So Ronan just nodded against Adam's stomach and crept lower. His mouth left marks above Adam's bellybutton, on his hips, his thighs. He was careful with Adam and himself this time, letting his tongue do the work instead of his throat. His lips stretched over Adam's cock and he closed his eyes, listening to the sounds Adam bit back, the twist of the sheets in his hands, the boyish, weak, private noises Ronan couldn't get enough of.

He pulled off before Adam could come, which earned him a pained, lip-bitten glance. Adam grabbed for Ronan's hand, pulled it to his face and took two fingers into his mouth. 

Ronan watched. He noticed the red edges of Adam's lips, the curtain of his lashes. He felt the insistent knot in his stomach tighten.

"C'mon," Adam rasped, and gave Ronan his hand back. Adam's legs fell open, his wet cock curved over his belly, his chest flushed. 

Candlelight cast shadows over Adam's face. It sharpened the shadow under his nose, the dark hollows of his collarbones and the faint dip of muscle on his stomach. He touched Ronan's face, dragged his hand behind Ronan's ear to his jaw, thumbed at his brow. It was a halted, tilting moment - Adam looking at Ronan and Ronan looking back. The church was quiet and all Ronan could hear was Adam breathing. 

He wanted to tell Adam he loved him, but he leaned down and kissed him instead. 

The fingers that were previously in Adam's mouth journeyed between his legs and Ronan hesitated when Adam twitched.

"Cold," Adam clarified. "Should've brought your dream jelly."

"Should've," Ronan agreed. He pressed in and Adam's mouth popped open. He felt brave again, so Ronan asked, "Do you do this to yourself?" Because apparently, Adam liked to talk during this sort of thing.

"Last night, yeah," Adam said. He hid his face in Ronan's throat. "I fucked myself and I thought of you and I almost -" Ronan pressed deeper, sliding a second along the first. Adam's breath hitched. "I almost called you, but you never answer your phone."

Ronan hated himself. Suddenly he decided he would love phones. He would carry his fully charged cellphone everywhere, and he would always answer it, and he would set the ringer on loud so he never missed a call, because fuck. Fuck, he _loved_ phones, especially phones that had Adam's voice on the other end of them, breathing hard, moaning into the speaker. He squeezed a little more lube on his fingers and chewed on his lip, driving in deeper, rubbing hard against the soft knot tucked inside Adam.

Adam had zero shame. Ronan had learned that quickly. When Adam decided he trusted someone, when he decided he wanted something, when he decided he was with someone, they got all of him. He didn't hold back the throaty moan, the roll of his hips and broken whine. Ronan had never seen Adam as receptive of this - only when he was scrying - and he'd never, ever thought he would be the one touching Adam like this, breaking him apart like this.

Ronan pushed Adam's leg up and twisted his fingers. "Did it feel like this?"

"No," Adam gasped. "No, not even close."

"Careful, don't wake up the nuns," Ronan whispered. He pushed deeper again, curling his fingers cruelly until Adam was clutching at his shoulders, muffling a curse against his neck. Ronan was so hard it hurt. He was going to hell. God could never forgive him for this - loving a magician, being a dreamer, fucking his boyfriend in a holy place. He was done in. It was over.

Adam tapped Ronan's wrist. "Stop," his voice cracked. 

Ronan stopped. Adam sat up and nudged Ronan over, until Ronan was leaning against the wall the mattress was pushed against. Adam swung his legs over Ronan's lap and smoothed his hands along Ronan's neck, gripped his jaw and pulled until their mouths met. Kissing Adam was a drug. Like Kavinsky's pills. His aggressiveness smoldered under every movement. He gripped Ronan's face harder, tugged until Ronan opened his mouth wider, kissed deeper, lost his breath altogether. Ronan loved it. He got high off it.

Adam only stopped kissing him when Ronan pressed into him.

"It might hurt," Ronan said.

"It's fine," Adam gritted. He sank down and hid his face. The tight pull of his shoulders and his grip on Ronan's ribs was a sure sign of pain. 

"Slow," Ronan cooed. He wrapped his hands around Adam's hips, guiding him. 

Adam's breath gusted from him. He rolled his hips and Ronan caught him wince. 

Ronan kissed him again. His hand traced the line of his hipbone, fingers closed around his cock to relieve some of the pressure.

It was kissing and then it was moving and then it was Adam breathing into Ronan's mouth, eyes open, watching Ronan from under his lashes. It was Adam's hips rolling in Ronan's lap, and Ronan pressing up into him, the tender sound of their bodies meeting and chased breath and fluttering, shaky moans. It was so much different than last week. It was unlike any dream - because when Ronan dreamed, he dreamed of his brutality - and when he dreamed of light, it wasn't like this.

Shadows striped Adam's chest, moving with the flicker of the candle. Ronan kept one hand on his hip, the other on his neck, and he watched the order of it - pain into pleasure, pleasure into something else - cross his face. Adam closed his eyes once, grinding down and choking out Ronan's name. 

Ronan could've died, right then.

"Touch me," Adam sighed against his mouth. 

Ronan might've died, right then.

He closed his hand around Adam's cock again and watched Adam's head tip back, the line of his freckled throat stark against the darkness.

Ronan was in love. He was murderously, violently in love.

Adam trembled when he came. He kissed Ronan hard, but it disintegrated into a gasp and a moan, both of them trying to contain each other as quietly as they could. 

Ronan felt it, the tightening of Adam's body, the spasms and jerks and tremors. He felt the moment he almost said it, come and go - I love you. He swallowed it when he came, mouth on Adam's throat, sucking a vibrant bruise atop the flexed tendon that slid from behind his ear to his clavicle. 

Adam leaned on him, his weight a comfort against Ronan's chest. 

They didn't speak. Ronan touched Adam's face, the cliff of his cheekbones, the swell of his lips. Adam rested his hand on Ronan's chest, traced scars with his fingertips. 

"You think we can bring it back?" Adam asked. He rested his forehead against Ronan's.

The smell of Cabeswater filled the room. The sound of rustling through copper leaves and the bubble of a stream echoed distantly.  
They both caught the scent. The both heard the whisper.

"Fuck, right now I feel like I could do anything," Ronan confessed.

Adam's lips split into a loose grin. "You can," he said. His lips dusted Ronan's mouth. "Greywaren."

**Author's Note:**

> erp. welp. yep, another one.


End file.
